Scarsdale Therapist Claudia Bassin Joins The Happiness Show

The world’s only television program entirely about helping our world become happier has a new co-host. Claudia Bassin, a psychotherapist with a practice in Scarsdale, New York, recently began taping episodes of The Happiness Show with producer and co-host George Ortega. The two have just completed episodes 122 through 127 of the national cable TV show, which premiered in 2003 and presents its entire collection through the Internet at www.thehappinessshow.com.

A multi-talented personality, Ms. Bassin began entertaining in the late seventies as the lead singer and songwriter of the New York City band ‘Femme Fatale.’ Ms. Bassin also taught aerobic dance and fitness classes until a back injury and several months of recovery in the mid-eighties lead her to launch a counseling career in the New York City schools. She then attended Columbia University, earned her Master of Science in Social Work, and began work with a high school substance abuse program. In the early nineties she started her private counseling practice in Westchester County, New York.

“I’m very excited about having Claudia with the show” said Ortega. “In addition to adding a ‘professional counseling’ dimension to the show, she is eager to enliven its format by taking our cameras out into the wider world and interviewing people in different settings to discover what makes them happy”, he adds. The two also have plans to use the television program as a showcase for a weekly happiness how-to group they are developing. “It would be easy and fun for our viewers to learn from one another basic techniques on becoming happier”, says Bassin. “When people hang out together, brain waves are stimulated, concepts are inspired and philosophies are born; I call it an ‘idea party,’” she adds. Bassin describes her neurological/cognitive-behavioral model for happiness as helping people to boost pleasure energy and diminish distress acuity.

With Ortega and Bassin as co- hosts, The Happiness Show is continuing its pioneering role of bringing viewers worldwide progressive, research-based insights and methods designed to help us all create a happier world.